Mr. Hunnam is a charismatic center of attention, Ms. Baccarin perhaps more so for some of us, and Mr. Gibson, though doled out sparingly, is deftly funny.

Though marred by an unfortunate title (“Fire of Love” sounds like a disco number from about 1979) and by the wobbly vocals of its narrator, Miranda July, who speaks in a fragile croak, the film is one of the year’s few awe-inspiring documentaries—a visually ravishing record, a bustling adventure, and an engrossing character study that begs to be remade, with actors, as a big-budget Hollywood narrative feature.

Thor: Love and Thunder is, like most of the Marvel films since Iron Man died, only intermittently amusing, a bit wobbly in its storytelling, thin in its emotional impact and more geared toward spectacle than coherence.

“The Lost Tapes” is a chronicle of folly, which makes it perversely fascinating and, one hopes, cautionary.

Barbarians is sometimes a comedy of ill manners, sometimes an exhilarating thriller, but it’s also an amusingly clever and sometimes violent parable about venality, vulgarity and territoriality. Barbarians may be an ambiguous title, but it’s apt.

It’s all painfully exact and true. Myself a product of exactly this kind of blue-collar New England community, I winced as I laughed at this gang of badly dressed, foul-mouthed reprobates. My people!

There’s no sense to almost every element in the movie, and its sensibility is this: that dull dialogue is bound to sound witty if delivered in an English accent. It doesn’t. At least the costumes are pretty.

The film is a sort of jigsaw puzzle that demands either paying minute attention or viewing it twice. Seemingly unimportant and easily forgotten details from the opening minutes turn out to cohere and create a conclusive emotional impact of the kind that everyone in the movie is missing.

The editing is like a kaleidoscope fed through a food processor, the camera has less ability to sit still than a 4-year-old stuffed with birthday cake, and both lead actors veer into camp.

All three of these attractively awful figures are to egotism approximately what the sun is to light, which makes for a delightful triangular battle for supremacy not unlike the one in All About Eve. Clever plotting—an early, seemingly throwaway scene in which Félix does some goofy martial-arts training turns out to be critical—and inventive character details enhance the wicked fun.

It’s nice to know that Team Pixar can still recognize the importance of fun. Though Lightyear isn’t as funny as the original “Toy Story,” nor as emotionally potent as “Toy Story 2,” and hence probably won’t be rewatched nearly as many times as those two classics, it’s a plucky and rousing little sci-fi saga.

The clash Mr. Roberts devises between the lunchbucket blues of operating a crane at a shipyard and the dazzle of big-time sports raises pertinent questions about the relationship between vocation and avocation, about where we truly locate meaning in our lives, especially as time grows less disposable.

Mr. Davies’s wit is admirable, but his structure is nonexistent. He devises no problem to be solved, no goal to be met, no riddle to be answered. Occasionally we hear bits of Sassoon’s beautiful war poetry in voiceover, but it is irrelevant to most of the action.

A documentary of remarkable heft. Not to be missed.

All of the roaring and thundering in “Dominion” carries roughly the dramatic impact of a robust sneeze, because Mr. Trevorrow has forgotten that what we human beings care about, despite our addiction to spectacle, are human beings.

It’s a gripping historical document, regardless of where one stands on the central argument.

Lost Illusions is sumptuous yet piercing, an expertly plotted social-relations saga of the kind that once typified prestige Hollywood cinema, and it dives into moral quandaries rather than dispensing easy bromides.

Smartly directed, deftly edited, with a cast of performers who all get a chance to show what they can do.

Top Gun: Maverick is not a dislikable movie, by any means: The cast is charming, the military stuff is convincing, the action sequences are, as intended, pretty astounding: In the proper theater (I saw it in IMAX) it will be a physical experience, literally, one that may lead to armrests being shredded by white-knuckling audiences in cinemas all over the world. But it’s also a little depressing, because of where it says movies are going, what it says about the lack of creativity making its way on screen, and what a precarious balance movie theaters are in.

Alternately inspiring and dismaying—why is the large, affable Mr. Andrés filling this global vacuum of governmental response?—the movie is also informative, engaging and reads like an application for the Nobel Peace Prize.

18 1/2 — with a title aimed at fans of both Rose Mary Woods and Federico Fellini— then proceeds to go off the comedic rails.

The Found Footage Phenomenon, while long-winded, offers a knowledgeable take on what makes the difference.

Hold Your Fire is a bona-fide thriller, its elements in delicate balance.

There’s so much going on that one loses track of how inane so much of it is, but “A New Era” is also a pleasure, guilty or otherwise: Mr. Fellowes doesn’t go very deeply into any character, his frictionless repartee gliding by.

It’s a deranged story, one that offers all kinds of opportunities for examining changes in the state of artificial insemination, medical ethics, the ways in which the human body has been opened up like an evidence locker, and the catchup that legislation has to play with technology.

An uneven but likable horror film with one of the better plot twists in recent memory.

It’s largely a two-character drama with two capable actors, though neither Mr. Teague nor Ms. Richardson (who is usually quite good) are given much with which to win our sympathy.

The attitude of Mr. Navalny and his colleagues is fearless, in a country governed by fear. Thrillers are rarely so inspiring.

There’s no glory in the pugilism of The Survivor, save for the last, exquisite shot of Haft in his Marciano fight, which is alarmingly beautiful, a catharsis for Haft and a moment of aesthetic delirium for the viewer.

What you see is exactly what you think you’re seeing from the moment of your first guess. What you feel is another story—one of calm, almost inexplicable enchantment.

One of the pleasures—even privileges—of watching a film like this is seeing what superb actors are able to do with material that doesn’t aspire to greatness. The story is charming, the performances are exceptional.

Loving it is not the issue, of course—the level of amputating, eviscerating, decapitating violence transcends good nasty fun. The challenge is taking it in, watching it without averting your eyes—I can’t say mine stayed fixed on the screen—and seeing it for what it is, a tumultuous, graphically gorgeous entertainment for our time as well as an ineffably somber meditation on our species’ seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of savagery.

The film isn’t just about their search for love and the vagaries of modern dating, but the craziness of life as it’s lived by passionate, gifted people with insufficient channels for their passion and shabby containers for their gifts.

Productions can go wrong. Certain elements can fail to ignite or cohere. Bad stuff happens all the time, especially in industrial enterprises of this magnitude, but usually there’s some good stuff to dilute the debacle. Not here, though.

Funny, wry, emotionally potent, and like most films by Hirokazu Kore -eda (“Shoplifters,” “Nobody Knows,” “After Life”) operates on multiple levels—usually some kind of domestic tragicomedy under which lies profound existential disquiet.

A romance, bromance and good-natured send-up of teenage obsession.

It’s a return to dramatic accounts of blastoffs, followed by soul-filling footage from beyond our sheltering atmosphere and implacable gravity; a portrait, by reflected light from fiery boosters, of one of Earth’s most curious (in every respect) overachievers; and a testament to failing upward—far, far upward.

In this action adventure, the apotheosis of his career thus far, cheerful idiocy occasionally rises to the level of delectable lunacy. For the most part, though, it’s entertainment as punishing paradox, a high-speed slog.

This film is what it is, a particularly generic genre piece that the bean counters at a once-great studio must have had reason to believe would turn a profit, mostly in the foreign market. Very possibly it will.

It’s a piece of urban history seen through the lens of magic realism, a fragile but beguiling fantasy, tethered now and then to gritty reality, about a do-gooder doing the best he can against daunting odds.

While the romantic comedy is hobbled by the lack of onscreen chemistry between the stars, it’s never in doubt that both actors are giving these exertions their all—each excels individually, but they just can’t kiss like they mean it. Instead, their rapport is that of professional colleagues who complement each other’s work, and Ms. Bullock allows Mr. Tatum to showcase his brilliance at playing dumb.

Despite their wundercabinet of delights, the filmmakers most want to celebrate human beings in all their contradictions. Each of us, the movie says, is capable of everything.

Deep Water is a wickedly funny potboiler about sex, gossip and hypocrisy that Mr. Lyne has transplanted from the suburban Northeast to New Orleans, a city that sweats menace despite the film’s chilly blue cinematography and coldly erotic score.

The story’s pleasures are more literary than cinematic. On screen, it’s more obvious that Mr. Moore’s ideas don’t quite line up.

Ms. Leo is in the kind of role that befits her particular gifts—a character overwhelmed by her own emotions, who sucks the air out of whatever room she finds herself in. But Measure of Revenge moves with too much trepidation—or too much style, one might say—for a convincing urban thriller.

The film, written by the director and Thomas Reider, is often brutal in content and spare in style, a celebration of unquenchable tenacity and the sustaining power of love.

The climax as a whole is cheerfully chaotic, if not over the top, but who cares about perfection when a movie is as good as this one?

What’s lovely about The Adam Project is its treatment of grief, the love between mothers and sons and, to a slightly lesser extent, fathers and sons.

The film, playing in theaters, is very long, relentlessly intense, murmured more often than spoken, and photographed, by Greig Fraser, with a glowering gorgeousness that must be seen to be felt. It’s also enthralling and tailored to our time, an extended rumination on finding one’s moral compass in a world of all-encompassing evil.

In a tale that touches on such a diversity of subjects—loneliness, mortality, adoption, family ties, the realm of the senses, artificial intelligence—it’s the ineffable things that count.

The casting is perfect in concept, and occasionally fulfills its promise, but in a notably imperfect film that’s afflicted by a benumbing score and dreary songs.

Mr. Haroun is a sophisticated filmmaker who alternates bold, almost impressionistic strokes with quietly meditative passages, and his cinematographer, Mathieu Giombini, works in astonishing colors that can be bold and exquisitely subtle almost simultaneously.

An enthralling, even visionary drama that regards its subject with empathy and horror, locates him on the actual piece of land he once owned in Montana and portrays him through a stunning performance by Sharlto Copley, who finds emotional mercury in Kaczynski’s boiling cauldron of rage.

If less is more, Uncharted must be a masterpiece. It’s bloodless, heartless, joyless, sexless and, with one exception, charmless. The exception is Tom Holland, but what’s he doing in a slapdash action adventure adapted from a videogame? Making money, of course—gamers will flock.

Ms. Hurwitz’s film, which was written by Michael Levine, is modest in scale yet far-ranging.

As noted in the thoroughly entertaining Oscar Peterson : Black + White, the jazz giant never seemed to struggle, not musically: He arrived on the scene “fully formed,” someone notes, a technical wonder, a master of swing who reigned over the jazz keyboard for 60 years.

Blacklight isn’t much of a title. At the very least, though, it provides a useful hint that the movie isn’t much either. One could even argue that it’s not a movie at all, only a rusted-out recycling bin of ill-fitting themes, notions, poses, conventions, affectations, tropes, tropelets and inert snippets of dialogue from other movies.

There are a few charming moments between Ms. Lopez and Mr. Wilson that prove beyond doubt that their characters are too intelligent to be in this movie. And yet, here we are.

Like Poirot’s mustache, the movie as a whole is a waxworks.

Josephine Decker’s screen version of the Jandy Nelson young-adult novel, which was adapted by the author, embraces excess as an expression of the heroine’s mercurial spirit. Sometimes the results are excessively excessive, blithely blissed-out or simply clichéd. Mostly, though, they’re funny, affecting and endearing. And daring.

This vibrant, buoyant drama, intimate in scope instead of vast, takes us to Oslo—not exactly another planet, but an adventure all the same—where it builds a world of mercurial passions while its enchanting heroine, Julie ( Renate Reinsve ), belatedly and erratically comes of age over the course of several years.

The film is less like a full-fledged story than a series of notifications you might get on your phone, most of them couched in language that could have been generated by a buggy AI program.

For those with a hunger for surprising, affecting films, I say seek this one out by all means. Mr. Kuosmanen’s direction of actors is impeccable; he and his stars deserve one another fully.

It’s a tribute to the sizzle of the central relationship that you want all that silly plot stuff to go away so Maggi and Carsten can kiss some more. They’re the main course, and the most zestful one, in an alluring but overcooked feast.

Through no fault of Mr. Roth’s, his character isn’t interesting enough to sustain our involvement in the story. Neil’s detachment doesn’t intrigue us, it only detaches us in our turn.

The film is a fable, to be sure, and one that unfolds at a leisurely pace, not a tough-minded psychological drama. But it’s sharp-witted as well as soulful, reasonably suspenseful.

Instead of “The Shape of Water” this is a stream of drivel.

What this film does best is offer, sometimes playfully and sometimes not, new perspectives on the central problem of our shared history.

There’s too much plot for the film to manage, but its heart, and sumptuous art, are so firmly in the right place that its appeal comes through sweet and clear.

There are a few characters and storylines that aren’t quite resolved, but the essentials—notably, what launched Mickey into a life of crime—are wrapped up in a way that should mollify a viewership left hanging when the show was so abruptly assassinated.

Generic booze is, in its way, a shortcut, something pretending to be something else—something achieved through time, effort and expense. As such, it’s not a bad analogy for this movie.

[A] moving and poetic documentary portrait.

This astute, subversively funny film fills a broad canvas. Mainly, though, it’s about long division, the all-too-human state of being permanently and unwittingly split down the middle.

Jockey has its limits as full-fledged drama; it’s more of a meditation on mortality, as well as a love letter from a filmmaker son to his own father. At the same time, though, it’s a testament to the power of being recognized, truly seen and remembered.

Ms. McDonald resorts to some rather standard practices—fleeting graphics, subtitles and numbers—but the strength of the movie is its interviewees, including journalists Joe Castaldo, Alexandra Posadzki (“There was no plan. Why was there no plan?”) and Amy Castor, as well as Taylor Monahan of the crypto service MyCrypto.

A plausible premise, right? Yes, absolutely, but it’s squandered in a slapdash, scattershot sendup that turns almost everyone into nincompoops, trivializes everything it touches, oozes with self-delight, and becomes part of the babble and yammer it portrays.

All of the performances are superb. Ms. Smit is a special revelation. This is only her second feature, though you’d never know it from the alacrity and intensity of her scenes with Ms. Cruz.

The Matrix Resurrections is a recycling dump of murky effects, indifferent action and a crazily cluttered, relentlessly repetitive narrative.

The actor and his director may be addressing the oldest subject in drama. But they manage to give it a new twist nonetheless.

Those robots have read our emotional programming, Arthur says, and know exactly how and why we’ll do what we do. Which is more than one can say for viewers of Mother/Android, who will find the robot rebellion more plausible than the human behavior.

Ms. Gyllenhaal might have chosen conventionally entertaining material for her first time behind the camera, but she and Ms. Colman turn “The Lost Daughter” into something memorable. It’s a study of repression expressed with heartbreaking poignancy, a lost mother’s search for herself.

Nightmare Alley is, in its entirety, a beautifully visualized period piece that holds our attention and evokes plenty of horror, to be sure, but never brings us under the tent of wholehearted involvement. This time the beauty is screen deep.

Mr. Holland carries the day with unaffected charm, the good stuff is really good and improbably joyous, and the writers have found a plausible way of pushing the reset button for a new round of high-flying web-slinging. The possibilities are nothing less than multifarious.

Middleton and Spinney are all about the medium’s first megawatt celebrity, who is a slippery enough subject all by himself, one treated here with affection, intelligence and an unadoring tone that’s intriguing all by itself.

Mr. Rex gives a 100% phenomenal performance, starting with a bright veneer of charm that conceals only barely, then not at all, an unmoored soul.

Why so gloomy? Well, this is a serious movie, for better and, more often, worse.

Mr. Spielberg’s film is a revelation. He has seized the moment by rethinking and reworking the source material. The results aren’t perfect. The production suffers from a heart condition of sorts, a flaw in the love story that’s flagrant but not life-threatening. Altogether, though, this pulsing, exultant musical connects a classic of American entertainment to a contemporary audience as never before.

We are all snapshooters these days, highly placed spectators to tragedy that seems to be beyond our comprehension, let alone control. Flee takes us down to sea level.

The Hand of God creates a reality that is by turns hilarious, heartbreaking and remarkable for its buoyancy and grace. It’s a film from the hand of a master.

This is a significant addition to the Verhoeven canon, meaning it’s elegantly crafted, formidably well performed and as fascinating as it is lurid.

It’s also a film made by her grieving husband. On paper, it shouldn’t work at all. It works measurably better on screen.

I found the film so insistently campy yet painfully mirthless—its style lies somewhere between opera buffa and telenovela—that my mental state of acute anguish may have skewed my perceptions of whatever the story has to offer.

What it is can be summed up in a word that’s often used loosely but fits the case here—a masterpiece, a mysteriously enthralling creation that keeps you guessing about where it’s going, then reveals its essence with astonishing clarity.

[Mr. Anderson's] screenplay soars above and beyond literal references by creating the oddest power couple you’ve ever seen. Whatever the psychodynamics between Gary and Alana may be, their bond has its own brilliant logic.

There’s a lot going on and somehow not enough, because the emotional destination is so obvious, the tone so wearying and the performances, mostly, so stilted. The fight scenes, it must be said, are electrifying, especially the climactic battle.

Insisting on the significance of its themes, the film dispenses one emotion at a time while it creates a pervasive atmosphere of dread. Yet there’s no air in the atmosphere, not much life in the brooding landscapes.

If you’re up for going with the fascinating flow of a mercurial tale, this distinctive feature by Mike Mills may be just the ticket.

It’s serious at bottom. It means to teach and inspire, as well as entertain, and takes on more subjects of consequence than you can shake a racket at—among them race, parenting, marital dynamics, the weight of personal history and the mad commercialization of sports. Yet it’s marvelous fun from start to finish.